Compositions that can effectively moisturize and protect the skin during the bathing process while the skin is still wet are a potentially convenient, and time saving approach to skin treatment. By bathing is meant any number of processes commonly used to cleanse the body and face, e.g., showering. To be truly effective, these compositions must be such that an adequate level of benefit agent is retained on the skin after rinsing and/or towel drying without at the same time imparting an excessively oily feel to the wet and dry skin and without leaving it looking too shiny.
Bath oil, which is used by some consumers, must be applied sparingly because it does not absorb efficiently on the skin and the excess can be very oily and messy. Furthermore light bath oils (i.e., oils that have a low viscosity and spread on the skin) is absorb more rapidly to overcome this problem, but are not very effective in providing longer lasting benefits.
Conventional oil-in-water emulsion type skin lotions or creams that are designed to be applied to dry skin, even water resistant variants, are very poorly retained when applied to wet skin that is either further rinsed or towel dried. By contrast, conventional water-in-oil skin lotions that are designed for application to dry skin are very efficiently retained on wet skin but are excessively greasy and messy and are not perceived to absorb quickly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,578,299 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,888,492, both to Starch disclose gelled mineral oil compositions where at least 49% mineral oil is gelled by specific oil soluble copolymers (ethylene/propylene/styrene; and butylene/ethylene/styrene). There is no disclosure of structurant forming a network comprising particles having average size below about 25 microns; no disclosure of oils comprising a dispersed phase; and no disclosure of the specific dispersion stabilizer system of the subject invention. U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,632 to Reusch is related to the Starch patents and is similarly unrelated to the subject invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,699,488 to Deckner discloses compositions comprising high internal phase emulsions (HIP). HIPs are defined as emulsions having 74% or greater internal oil phase that can suspend materials when oil is present. The subject application is not a HIP, but a suspension of oil in a specific cross-linked gel continuous phase. Material can be suspended with or without oil.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,645,511 to Aronson et al. (and related U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,440 to Aronson et al.) disclose similar wet skin compositions. At Table 8, Example 8G, there is an example disclosing both gum (xanthan) and acrylate polymer (Carbopol). In this composition, ratio of acrylate to gum is 0.5 to 1. By contrast, in the subject application, applicants have found that ratio of acrylate to gum should be at is least 0.75:1, preferably at least 1:1 and higher (e.g., 3:1). Such ratio enhances the rheology of the wet skin compositions so that typically they will have a “lotion-like” rheology which may be defined, for example, by an elastic modulus (G′) greater than 100 Pascals (correlated with a thickness consumers perceive to be “just right”); and a percent drop in G′, when a pressure of 40 to 100 Pascals is applied, of about 50% or greater (correlated with “lotion-like” perception).